


Not the Rose, but Near

by nympheline



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nympheline/pseuds/nympheline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is so much more to it than Sherlock sees</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“When are you coming back?”

Elizabeth Anderson stares out the window of Sally’s battered Ford Focus. She picks at her nails. “Your car smells like chow mein.”

“You were late.”

Elizabeth shrugs, the treacherous slope of her shoulders white under the streetlights. “Insomnia. He thinks he has it.”

Anderson has no idea what he has. “When?” Sally asks again.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth says, her voice hitching at every word she speaks. “I don’t know, I just—”

“Don’t go.” Sally’s hands are wrapped around the wheel, and she looks ahead as if she has to, as if she’s driving them both away, as if her secondhand car were a white steed and she a black knight and Elizabeth a princess and prize all in one.

“I can’t, I just—”

“Pretend I didn't say anything. I’ll stay away, I’ll never call, I’ll skip every bloody Christmas party and drinks night until I retire, just please, please—”

“Sally, you fucking idiot.” Elizabeth gropes for the door, stumbles out, slams it without heed for the sound.

Sally waits until she can see Elizabeth safe inside her beautiful home, see Elizabeth collapse crying onto her beautiful couch. She drives away. Her wipers swish back and forth, back and forth for a full ten minutes before she realises that it isn't the rain rendering her blind.


	2. Chapter 2

Elizabeth.

Sally knows the sight of her: faded petal lips set smiling over a throat of Isabelline and cream, punctuated by a single freckle the exact shade of Sally Donovan.

(Sally at seventeen wore her dad’s castoff shirts as smocks, smiled at the mottled rainbows trapped underneath her fingernails, called herself an artist.)

Sally knows the scent of her: posh perfume trapped in the fibres of a forgotten scarf. Every month or so, Sally smacks her forehead and declares that one day she’ll remember to bring the damn thing with her. Elizabeth never mentions it.

(It took Sally a whole afternoon at Harrods to find the bottle that matches the source of the scent.)

Sally knows the sound of her: honking, hearty laugh that only Ricky Gervais (sometimes) and Sally Donovan (always) can prompt.

(Sally is not a musician, but she knows that Elizabeth laughs in the key of G major.)

“Elizabeth’s out of town,” Anderson says.

Give me the taste of her, Sally thinks. Filtered through a filthy medium, Elizabeth’s labial essence dwindles to a worth that matches Sally’s own--or so Sally thinks. But just now she's trying not to think.

Anderson runs his fingers through Sally’s muddled curls as she sinks to her knees. She cups him (hardening) through his trousers. She frees the tongue of his belt.


End file.
